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The Loved One
by
Evelyn Waugh
Hardcover, 164 pages
Published
June 1948
by Little, Brown and Company
(first published 1948)
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The copy I had of this was used, and had underlines where the previous reader would note in the margin "funny," and "ha." This reader stopped doing this by the third or fourth page, either because s/he no longer found it funny, or it became absurd to underline all passages and mark them as "ha." I think most readers will fall into either of these categories. I am in "ha."
The last couple of pages of this book made me chuckle. It's not everyday that you read a book about a cosmetician for the dead, an embalmer, and a pet cemetery employee with a poetic bent. The Hollywood Forever cemetery holds new meaning for me now.
Evelyn Waugh is my guilty pleasure. His books are like candy, they are so easy to read. But if they are candy, they are lemon drops coated with arsenic. Waugh's bitter, sarcastic, and completely devastating portraits of humanity warm my heart. His characters destroy each other's lives so casually, and I love it.
In The Loved One, Waugh takes on L.A. British neocolonial snobbery in post-war Southern California, set in a Disneyesque funeral home (actually a "memorial park") and a much less classy...more
In The Loved One, Waugh takes on L.A. British neocolonial snobbery in post-war Southern California, set in a Disneyesque funeral home (actually a "memorial park") and a much less classy...more
Jan 24, 2008
Chloe
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
anyone with a morbid sense of humor.
Recommended to Chloe by:
Rosie
While not my favorite book in the world, I have to say I enjoyed this macabre little satire. Perhaps the somewhat unusual humor appealed to me. I tend to find such things as funeral parlors and crematoriums amusing. I do not, however, find the story to be quite as condescending towards Americans as some people have said it was. The British characters were not especially intelligent, either. In fact, I would say that there are no attractive characters in the story. Which is part of the reason why...more
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I remember really liking this when I read it about 6 or 7 years ago (reading it in the bath in some American hotel - strange I remember that). I have a lot on my currently reading list at the minute, but I just can't cope with super-info-heavy books like The Fall of Yugoslavia when I'm in the bath, eating, or otherwise not equipped to scribble down notes in an attempt to understand the highly complex Baltic machinations.
This is a firecracker of a novella. Satirical sparks fly from the get-go, lighting up the social and cultural pretensions of all involved: Brits and Yanks. This is NOT just a piece of still-colonial, British transatlantic snobbery. The Brits here are as loathsome, self serving and corruptible and corrupting as the Americans. If anything, you suspect Waugh loathes them more: they knowingly sacrifice their personal talents and culture to serve 'cod art' - aka Hollywood. After all, the most cynical...more
A story of good entertainment value. Its narrative tone is quite satirical throughout, either given voice through the ironical British protagonist Dennis Barlow, or maintained by donning an insistent, embarrassing dignity in the description of the proceedings within "Whispering Glades." (The invention of Whispering Glades Memorial Park is a parody in itself, based on Dr. Hubert Eaton’s "Forest Lawn"--a center dedicated to memorializing deceased Loved Ones.) In Whispering Glades the employees and...more
Jul 21, 2012
Fraser Kinnear
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
literature,
english
Hilarious! And a very quick read. I hadn't read Waugh before, and just assumed early on in the book that the formality all of the characters present themselves in was just reflective of the world Waugh lived in and wrote about. All the better when these pretenses are demolished by moments of candor and silliness.
I found that I dog-eared and marked up the latter half of the book, while the front half was something I had to mostly be patient getting through, like the set up for a great joke. Waugh...more
I found that I dog-eared and marked up the latter half of the book, while the front half was something I had to mostly be patient getting through, like the set up for a great joke. Waugh...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Dec 08, 2011
Dustin Reade
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
just about anyone
Firstly, I shall discuss the plot: A young Englishman in America--whom is not respected by his compatriots due to the unfortunate fact that he works at, and enjoys working at, a Hollywood Pet Cemetery. He falls in love with a young woman whom happens to work for the lush and expansive Human cemetery as a cosmetician. She also happens to be in a semi-committed relationship with the Human Cemetery's Head Embalmer, Mr. Joyboy.
The book is filled with English wit, rapid fire dialogue, satire (Waugh...more
The book is filled with English wit, rapid fire dialogue, satire (Waugh...more
The satire is hilarious; so many quotable lines; the ending is still disturbingly cold, even for Waugh.
My specific reason for reading The Loved One, of course, is because of my cemetery project. Although Waugh obviously doesn't have much actual sense of Los Angeles as a place (and never claimed to, explicitly stating in the foreword that this is a 'fantasy') - one thing that always amazes me is how Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, which is the basis for the "Whispering Glades" operation d...more
My specific reason for reading The Loved One, of course, is because of my cemetery project. Although Waugh obviously doesn't have much actual sense of Los Angeles as a place (and never claimed to, explicitly stating in the foreword that this is a 'fantasy') - one thing that always amazes me is how Forest Lawn Memorial-Park in Glendale, which is the basis for the "Whispering Glades" operation d...more
Aug 16, 2011
Frederick
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
fiction,
waugh-evelyn
About two-thirds of the way through this novella (which is what this novel is) a character comments on Henry James's penchant for describing innocent Americans facing jaded Europeans. This novel (novella, I mean), about a European (or Englishman, which is a different thing, actually) among Americans seems to me to be a spin on Henry James. To its last sentence it is Jamesian, although the prose is much simpler.
For a guy who has a tin ear when it comes to American dialogue, Waugh certainly observ...more
For a guy who has a tin ear when it comes to American dialogue, Waugh certainly observ...more
I got so wrapped up in The Loved One that I couldn't put it down after getting off the train and read it WHILE I walked home. Don't worry, I looked up for intersections!
The Loved One is a comedy framed by suicides and enacted almost exclusively in funeral parlors. Dennis Barlow is a displaced English poet living in Hollywood, who works for a funeral parlor for pets - the Happier Hunting Ground. He falls in love with the absurdly, appropriately named Aimée Thanatogenos, cosmetician for the fancie...more
The Loved One is a comedy framed by suicides and enacted almost exclusively in funeral parlors. Dennis Barlow is a displaced English poet living in Hollywood, who works for a funeral parlor for pets - the Happier Hunting Ground. He falls in love with the absurdly, appropriately named Aimée Thanatogenos, cosmetician for the fancie...more
Evelyn Waugh is a writer to approach with caution. At his best he is mournful and elegiac, deeply moving (Brideshead Revisited). He can also be wistfully, bitterly funny (A Handful of Dust). At his worst (Vile Bodies) he descends into silliness, seeming to aim for and miss a kind of humour akin to that of P. G. Wodehouse. The Loved One is an example of his best.
It is in parts touching and in parts caustic, with just the right admixture of the two. There are some wonderfully biting lines in evide...more
It is in parts touching and in parts caustic, with just the right admixture of the two. There are some wonderfully biting lines in evide...more
My appreciation of Evelyn Waugh's The Loved One is authentic, sure, but at the same time a little reserved because, try as I might, I can't convincingly revise my initial impression of it as a cheap shot at American life and values -- which isn't to say that it isn't funny or compelling or entertaining, but rather that in the considerable chunk of time separating us from the initial publication of The Loved One (this time marking the ascendancy of the United States on the global stage both polit...more
33 likes · like · see review
A viciously funny satire of the American pre-packaged lifestyle, The Loved One takes place in postwar Los Angeles. Waugh puts his Oxonian wit to good use here, as even the name of his tragic heroine, Aimee Thanatogenos, is in itself a wickedly funny little in-joke. Thanatogenos translates to something roughly meaning "Family of Death" (I say roughly, I took Latin in college, not Greek), which suits her as she's fully indoctrinated into the cult of death at Whispering Glades, the mortuary establi...more
Not a lot carrying this one forward save the occasional macabre joke or quick jab of dark humor, The Loved One is a concise little satire about the commercialization and marketing engineers behind death, love, and God. Unfortunately, Waugh does not mine this theme to its full potential, and instead places the narrative in warp-speed to a dimension that consists of exposition-laden, jump-cut-esque advice letters and the obvious indifferent reply. Waugh seems to be trying hard to push this story o...more
My fourth experience of Waugh and once more I was not disappointed. This fun little novella is filled with Waugh staples; mean Brits abroad and parodies of the natives. Only this time it is a people and a place we have all come to be too familiar with over the last 70 years, Los Angeles, USA.
He writes quite beautifully, filling paragraphs with sentences of exquisite composition that always achieve their aim; whether that be to make you laugh, shock or create a credible absurdity in your mind. Th...more
He writes quite beautifully, filling paragraphs with sentences of exquisite composition that always achieve their aim; whether that be to make you laugh, shock or create a credible absurdity in your mind. Th...more
4 likes · like · see review
Mar 31, 2012
Lindsay Heller
rated it
3 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
2012,
antiquity-nostalgia
I feel rather wrong giving three stars to an Evelyn Waugh novel, particularly since the feeling I had coming away from this one was that I did, in fact, like it. But I suppose my problem is that I didn't love it. This volume was thin, which was part of the reason why I picked it up just now; it had been sitting on my shelf since Borders went out of business and I thought now was as good a time as any to tick it off my list.
'The Loved One' is essentially about funerals. British expatriate, Denni...more
'The Loved One' is essentially about funerals. British expatriate, Denni...more
Earlier this week, on 9/6 to be precise, I was looking for a short unread novel on my shelf. There are of course many, but you have to be in the mood. I spotted this one, which I had bought sometime last year on a whim at Powell's and when I cracked open the cover, I saw "9/06" written there in pencil. A sign that I should start reading it that day? Maybe it was just when it was entered at Powell's, September of 2006, or some other bookstore code. Regardless, it felt synchronistic and when it's...more
Brief, satirical and rather funny novel about the American funeral industry. Waugh visited California in 1947; he didn't like it, finding the tendency of the "lower orders" to ask personal questions rather irritating. Waugh was a snob and it shows.
It is funny in parts. The love triangle is very amusing; this isn't the intense YA/vampire type. It involves Aimee Thanatogenos, who works at Whispering Glades, a funeral emporium. She does cosmetic work on the corpses. One of her beaus is the wonderf...more
It is funny in parts. The love triangle is very amusing; this isn't the intense YA/vampire type. It involves Aimee Thanatogenos, who works at Whispering Glades, a funeral emporium. She does cosmetic work on the corpses. One of her beaus is the wonderf...more
11 likes · like · see review
May 21, 2013
Eliza
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
mt-auburn-book-club,
novel
5/17/2013: This novel came at me out of left field; even though I understood the context and tone, language and highly ironic humor, still, TLO is so very different from novels that I hang out with that it took my by surprise. More importantly, reading it reminded me that I should get out of my cozy nest of narrative choices more often. The novel is dark and hilarious, over the top but still too close to home, articulate, spare, and classy. All of that, yet with a premise and plot so ridiculous...more
In which Waugh again proves that the satisfactions of 'realistic' fiction are pretty pale compared to the satisfactions of vicious, spiteful, hate-filled satire. The characters, plot and setting are all paper thin, but that helps the book with it's main point, which is to make you laugh out loud and recognize the ugliness, stupidity and vanity of the world in general. There's nothing and nobody redeeming here. The Brits are snobs and/or morons; the Yanks are James-lite innocents with none of the...more
If I were writing an AP English Lit essay about "dark comedy," this short novel would make a meaty body paragraph. It's a little romantic comedy set in Hollywood; a love triangle between a mama's boy mortician, a captivating corpse beautician, and a young English poet with writer's block who's seeking a muse. Oh, and he works in a pet mortuary.
The Loved One was a welcome treat, especially since I felt so lukewarm about the last Waugh I read (Decline and Fall). Biting satire and stuff you feel j...more
The Loved One was a welcome treat, especially since I felt so lukewarm about the last Waugh I read (Decline and Fall). Biting satire and stuff you feel j...more
I perhaps do The Loved One an injustice and reveal myself to be a tragically inept reviewer (alas, no doubt repeating what I've heard elsewhere) if I use phrases like "insidious," "satiric," "irreverent," "macabre," and "delicious" to describe the book, or if I mention that it seemed reminiscent of Huxley and Chandler, if they were to collaborate on a story on the same subject.
None of the characters were presented in a particularly positive light, though some retained more dignity than others. T...more
None of the characters were presented in a particularly positive light, though some retained more dignity than others. T...more
I read this book in college for British Novel. It seemed quite amusing at the time, but it's sinking in a littler deeper now. It's sharp satire of the American denial of death, Hollywood--and lots of other stuff--decadent, washed-up British imperialism; pointless European cynicism, ignorant American culturelessness, what else? This time around, I found Dennis' jaded comments quite pithy--he's the young British poet who has a job at a Los Angeles pet cemetery. But I was getting a little too inter...more
An hilarious send up of the of the commodified death. Waugh's prose is superb and his glaring English Eye cast upon the lowly Americans that populate the novel open up the opportunity for many clever passages. One of my favorites comes at the beginning of the novel:
[The Americans (particularly those of Hollywood California):] are a very decent generous lot of people out here and they don't expect your to listen. Always remember that, dear boy. It's the secret of social ease in this country. The...more
This was described by Anna Haycraft (better known as Alice Thomas Ellis) as ”One of the funniest and most significant books of the century”. The friction that drives it is the awkwardness of British cultural attitudes in post-war Los Angeles, set mostly in the Whispering Glades Memorial Park – a kind of Disneyland for the dead – and involving a young British poet who falls for a young American corpse beautician while he himself works secretly as a mortician at a pet cemetery. Waugh is funniest w...more
Waugh's satirical portrait of post-WWII Los Angeles is clever and laugh-out-loud funny in many places, but marred by an ending that just doesn't quite work. Though each of the four protagonists are well-drawn and amiable characters, the heroine is ultimately given a short shrift and the ending Waugh devises for her doesn't sit well, feeling more like the kind of thing an author makes a character do in order to make his point (or tie up his story) rather than anything authentic to the character....more
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| Comic Book Club: The Loved One | 15 | 7 | Nov 27, 2011 03:33pm |
Evelyn Waugh's father Arthur was a noted editor and publisher. His only sibling Alec also became a writer of note. In fact, his book “The Loom of Youth” (1917) a novel about his old boarding school Sherborne caused Evelyn to be expelled from there and placed at Lancing College. He said of his time there, “…the whole of English education when I was brought up was to produce prose writers; it was al...more
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“Her heart was broken perhaps, but it was a small inexpensive organ of local manufacture. In a wider and grander way she felt things had been simplified.”
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“Once you start changing a name, you see, there's no reason ever to stop. One always hears one that sounds better.”
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